"Foreground" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... irritated by confidential wild eulogies of the beautiful woman, had recently clamoured for proofs of his commandership. The impression she stamped on him at Copsley remained, but it could not occupy the foreground for ever. He did not object to play second to her sprightly wits in converse, if he had some warm testimony to his mastery over her blood. For the world had given her to him, enthusiastic friends had congratulated ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... foreground of Jean's was a pretty clump of fir-trees growing beside an old ruined stone wall, under which nestled a bunch of dry goldenrod. But the background! Did ever the maddest artist's brain conceive of such? Clear and distinct, where sky should have ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... a town supported of old almost entirely by the arsenal works, is a desolate little stronghold among towering mountains, the ruins being in the foreground. The precipices on either side of the river belong to the Elk Ridge, through which, at some antediluvian period, the colossal current has hewed its way. At the base of the Virginia side of the mountains, hugged in by the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers, and by Loudon ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... to give a consecutive view of the contents of those volumes. Their nature is the reverse of consecutive. They are as odd, irregular, and often as novel, as the changes of a kaleidoscope. Nothing can be less like a picture, with its background, and foreground, its middle tints and its chiaroscuro. Their best emblem perhaps would be the "Dissolving views," where a palace has scarcely met the eye, before it melts into an Italian lake; or the procession to a Romish shrine is metamorphosed into a charge ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... fertile district: the outlines of those magnificent mountains, the Victoria and Grampian ranges, that completed the distant part of the landscape, to the eastward, were distinctly defined against the clear morning sky; whilst, in the foreground, grassy round-topped hills, rose on either side of wide valleys sparingly dotted with trees, marking the course of the streams that meander through them, and the margin of the singular circular waterholes, with sides so steep as to render it necessary to cut through them to enable the cattle ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... then, were these: the foreground, the middle distance and the background made a synthetic whole, logically consistent, rational even—when you allow for the artist's make-up. That he will leave a full statement before the end, I venture to prophecy. ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... Desert, we began to see our destination;—palms and tufty trees at the mouth of a masked Wady. This watercourse runs between a background of reddish-brown rock, the foot-hills and sub-ranges of the grand block, "El-Znah," to the north; and a foreground of pale-yellow, stark-naked gypsum, apparently tongue-shaped. Above the latter tower two sister-quoins of ruddy material, the Shigdawayn, to which a ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... open sky and infinite, rolling distances of land and sea. It brought to mind the grey flatness of Essex, the lonely reaches of mud, the solitary house and the neighbourly hedges of the narrow roads. And it did this quite independently of the bizarre structure that lay athwart the foreground, like some immense disabled insect in a moment of exhaustion. It lay there, prone and motionless, a sprawling emblem of despair. And aloft, high up, as though in subtle mockery of the poor human endeavour below, a sea-bird soared with wings ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... for he has been somewhat nettled by Mr. Caxton's remarks, and he puts on an air of dignity in order to awe away minor assailants).—"Yes, Captain Roland; not yet a while, but all in good time. I have not stinted myself in canvas, and behind my foreground of the Hall and the Parsonage I propose hereafter to open some lengthened perspective of the varieties of ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... God's help, I would vanquish my huge enemy and rescue them from their dreadful position. I was in splendid condition, with muscles like steel from incessant walking. At length the warriors squatted down upon the ground in the form of a crescent, the chiefs in the foreground, and every detail of the struggle that followed was observed with ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... the background depicted by the artist who drew the wrapper for the first serial issue of "The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club." Putney Church is seen in the distance, with its Henry VIII. Chapel, and in the foreground Mr. Pickwick is found dozing in his traditional punt,—that curious box, or coffin-like, affair, which, as a pleasure craft, is ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... with "76 Fed." after the departure of Mr. Sorg he found his partner smoking the usual stogy and gazing pensively down upon the harbor. The immediate foreground was composed of rectangular roofs of divers colors, mostly reddish, ornamented with eccentrically shaped chimney pots, pent-houses, skylights and water tanks, in addition to various curious whistle-like protuberances from which white wraiths of steam whirled and ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... private and personal; partly adventitious and partly of his own making. The growing sectionalism in Illinois gave politicians serious concern. It was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain the integrity of political parties, when sectional issues were thrust into the foreground of political discussion. Yankee and Southerner did not mix readily in the caldron of State politics. But a central railroad which both desired, might promote a mechanical mixture of social and commercial ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... (see Pl. LXXXVII). Frequently in such cases the surface of the ground shows no evidence of the outlines or dimensions of the underlying room. Examples of such subterranean kivas may be seen in the foreground of the general view of a court in Oraibi (Pl. XXXVIII), and in the view of the dance rock at Walpi (Pl. XXIV). But such wholly subterranean arrangement of the ceremonial chamber is by no means universal ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... slumber, did not perceive that the slow motion of the train gradually became slower, and finally entirely ceased; and even Grace, lost in her pleasant daydream, scarcely observed that the unsightly buildings of a little way-station had thrust themselves into the foreground of her landscape—for this foreground she ignored, keeping her blue eyes serenely fixed upon the great brown mountains beyond. Nor was she more than dimly conscious of the appearance upon the station platform of ...
— A Border Ruffian - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... world stood still and his mind moved. It "wandered," as they said. And in its wanderings it came upon strange gaps and hollows and fantastic dislocations, landslips where a whole foreground had given way. It looked at these things with a serene and dreamlike wonder and ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... precisely for this reason, it has lost its former broad significance. The mizbeah, that is, the place where the zebahim are to be offered, has been transformed into a mizbah ha-'olah. The burnt-offering has become quite independent and comes everywhere into the foreground, the sacrifices which are unconnected with a meal altogether predominate,—so much that, as is well known, Theophrastus could declare there were no others among the Jews, who in this way were differentiated from all other nations. /1/ Where ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... stage of punishment is higher still. Jennie is punished in order to reform her. In the previous examples the act was all-important. Now Jennie and her moral condition come into the foreground. None of the younger children take the trouble to explain to Jennie why it was wrong to paint the parlor chairs. A large percentage of the older ones ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... to the Cuban section, where Romanach's Dsseldorf style of picture shows at least good academic training, without rising, however, above illustration in any one of the very well painted figure pictures. Rodriguez Morey's big, intimate foreground studies are commendable for their faithfulness and for a certain poetic quality which takes them out of the realm ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... Doors in the centre and on both sides. On the left, in the foreground, a desk with newspapers and documents. On the right, a similar, smaller ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... here is a charming bit of forest scenery. Look at that old oak with the deer under it; the long and deep range of fern running up from it to that beech-grove on the upland, the lights and shadows on the projections and recesses of the wood, and the blaze of foxglove in its foreground. It is a place in which a poet might look for ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... discuss the trickery which he believed himself to have witnessed, as dispassionately as any other non-credulous person might have done so. The experience must even before that have passed out of the foreground of his conjugal life. He remained, nevertheless, subject, for many years, to gusts of uncontrollable emotion which would sweep over him whenever the question of 'spirits' or 'spiritualism' was revived; ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... downgrade in readiness for a quick return; he ran it close to the inner wall of rock out of which the road had been carved, then seated himself on the outer rim without thought of the thousand-foot sheer drop beneath his dangling legs. With a glass he was sweeping the foreground where the scattered lights of the camp were like vagrant reflections of the stars thrown back to them from the ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... beautiful distant blue of the British hills. Their gentler mountain streams also permit the beds of rock to remain in firm, though fantastic, forms along their banks, and the gradual action of the cascades and eddies upon the slaty cleavage produces many pieces of foreground scenery to which higher hills can present ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... makes you understand the import of the phrase so constantly on the lips of such victims of their own credulous hopes of El Dorado—"Woe to COLUMBUS!" The portrait of Vanya's stepfather, brilliant, magnanimous, pursued by an AEschylean malignity of destiny, fills much of the foreground and is a quite masterly piece of work. One cannot be wrong in assuming this to be essential autobiography; there is a passionate conviction as of things intimately seen and dreadfully suffered. Such material might well have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... hotel lay just where the foothills of the Sierras with their groves of live oaks were sloping into the golden plains of the Sacramento. Nature had showered on it every wonderful gift in her lap. A foreground rich with flowers, luxuriant in fruit, shade and sun, dry pastures, rushing rivers, and murmuring rills, were here. Great trees were variants of the view, and the high Sierras to the east overtopped the ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... exactly as if I had plucked them from the foreground of a Fifteenth Century painting, don't they?" he went on, holding them off again. "Florentine, of course. Ah, in those days painting was a fine art, and worth a rational being's consideration,—in those days, and in just that little Tuscan corner of ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... Clifton-Hampden. We pass Wallingford and Goring, and come to Pangbourne and Whitchurch, where the little river Pang flows in between green hills. Each village has the virtue that Dr. Johnson extolled when he said that "the finest landscape in the world is improved by a good inn in the foreground." Then we come to Mapledurham and Purley, where Warren Hastings lived, and finally halt at Caversham, known as the port of Reading. Here the Thames widens, and here in the olden time was the little chapel with a statue of the Virgin known as the "Lady of Caversham," ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... green went presently into yellow, out-sweeping through the picture dismally. But the faces were painted to the very life, or it seemed so; there were only five of them, however, that were very marked or came much in the foreground; and four of these I knew well, though I did not then remember the names of those that had borne them. They were Red Harald, Swanhilda, Amald, and myself. The fifth I did not know; it was a woman's ...
— The Hollow Land • William Morris
... or Purdy had been last in the capital, and next morning, on stepping out of the "Adam and Eve," they walked up the eastern slope to look about them. From the summit of the hill their view stretched to the waters of the Bay, and its forest of masts. The nearer foreground was made up of mud flats, through which a sluggish, coffee-coloured river wound its way to the sea. On the horizon to the north, the Dandenong Ranges rose storm-blue and distinct, and seemed momently to ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... hint of the despairing protest that surged close to the surface. Individually and collectively, she reiterated to herself, she despised men. Her resentment had not yet extended to the women of Cariboo Meadows. They were mostly too busy with their work to be much in the foreground. She did observe, or thought she observed, a certain coolness in Mrs. Briggs' manner—a ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... well laugh at that one. It was taken under fire, and I can tell you that a sketch made under fire is apt to turn out defective in drawing. That highly effective and happy accidental touch in the immediate foreground I claim no credit for. It was made by a bullet which first knocked the pencil out of my hand and then terminated the career of my best horse; while that sunny gleam in the middle distance was caused ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... dramatized by the Spanish poet Calderon in his Magico Prodigioso, a part of which has been finely translated by Shelley. The beautiful picture of St. Justina by Moretto, where Cyprian is kneeling before her and a white unicorn, the symbol of chastity, is crouching in the foreground, ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... pathetic impression. But it is, in truth, nearly as conspicuous in the greater part of her productions; where we scarcely meet with any striking sentiment that is not ushered in by some such symphony of external nature—and scarcely a lovely picture that does not serve as an appropriate foreground to some deep or lofty emotion. We may illustrate this proposition, we think, by the following exquisite lines, on a palm-tree in an ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... opening of a bright autumnal day. The softened lights streamed playfully athwart the grim and shadowy masses that lay on the chequered pavement, like the smiles of infancy sporting on the dark bosom of the tomb. The screen formed a rich foreground, in half-shadow, before the east window. The first beam of the morning, clothed in tenfold brightness, burst through the variegated tracery. Prophets, saints, and martyrs shone there, gloriously portrayed ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... of his eyes, Nancy saw above the heads of the multitude a waving dust-canopy, sent up by myriad tramplings on the sun-scorched streets. Glare of gas illumined it in the foreground; beyond, it dimmed all ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... away from the mountains the view widens. Masses of palms, dark green bamboos, and other tropical growths fill up the distance. In the foreground are irrigated rice terraces, with gleaming waters and the freshest of verdure. Here copper-coloured natives are at work. Men are ploughing the wet soil of the sawahs with buffaloes; women—often with their babies slung on their backs with their long scarfs—are hoeing, or weeding, or reaping. As ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... rejoined. "If you have a slight past, that only makes you the more atmospheric. Be sure you come again soon, and put in a little more work on the foreground." ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... the purpose designated by the inscription "Orphan Asylum," a haven for the desolate and miserable. The front door was closed, but upon the broad granite steps, where the sunlight lay warm and tempting, sat a trio of the inmates. In the foreground was a slight fairy form, "a wee winsome thing," with coral lips, and large, soft blue eyes, set in a frame of short, clustering golden curls. She looked about six years old, and was clad, like her companions, in canary-colored flannel dress ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... these sheaves," he continued, "and look again. Let us reject not a single one of the little facts that build up the reality of which I have spoken. Let us permit them to depart of their own accord into space. They cumber the foreground, and yet we cannot but be aware of the existence behind them of a great and very curious force that sustains the whole. Does it only sustain and not raise? These men whom we see before us are at least no longer the ferocious animals of whom La Bruyere speaks, the ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... Wio-wani grew as he walked down the avenues of his garden and into the foreground of his picture! and how big the brick in his hand! and ...
— The Blue Moon • Laurence Housman
... the course of the great stream from their arrival in September until their departure the following spring. Taller than the Wood Ibises or the largest Herons with which they are associated, the stately birds stand in the foreground of the scenery of the valley.... Such ponderous bodies moving with slowly-beating wings give a great idea of momentum from mere weight, a force of motion without swiftness; for they plod along heavily, seeming to need every inch of their ample wings to sustain themselves." [Footnote: Birds ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... "middle ground" between general and technical training. They went beyond the general training of the elementary schools and furnished the girl with the background of her future vocation. But she often needed a little more of the foreground, a little more of ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... colleges were founded as manual labor schools, but the remains of these beginnings are few and insignificant. Oberlin, which was once operated on this basis, still retains the seal of "Learning and Labor," with a college building in the foreground and a field of grain in the distance. A number of our institutions have recitations now in the forenoon that students may devote the afternoon to labor. In some schools Monday instead of Saturday is the open day of the week because this ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... in KRASNOV's house; directly in front a door leading to a vestibule; to the right a window and a bed with chintz curtains; to the left a stove-couch and a door into the kitchen; in the foreground a plain board table and several chairs; along the back wall and window benches; along the left wall a cupboard with cups, a small mirror, ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... him. Give way he would not, rather resign his position; and besides, he knew of one who had promised him her friendship, if all others should turn their backs on him. And now as the day went on, and the shadows of evening began to fall, and no dean appeared, she came more and more into the foreground of his thoughts. He imagined her by his side, battling with him against the whole world, and full of hope and courage he laid down ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... homesteads. Very small it was, consisting only of an inn, a house, half cottage and half shop, and a few red-tiled cottages wherein the bargemen lived, when they were at home, which was seldom. In the bright sunlight, the blue sky overhead and the shining river in the foreground, it formed a pretty ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... apartment was grandiloquently termed, had been the very spot chosen for our presumably not very terrible ordeal. Things were well under way. At the desk in the corner one officer was jotting down notes as to the clearance papers and the cargo; while at a table in the foreground sat his comrade, in a lieutenant's uniform, with the captain of the Re d'Italia at his right, swart-faced and silent, and the list of the passengers lying ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... background a steel-colored river wound through a pale calcareous landscape; while to the left, on a lonely peak, a crucified Christ hung livid against indigo clouds. The central figure of the foreground, however, was that of a woman seated in an antique chair of marble with bas-reliefs of dancing maenads. Her feet rested on a meadow sprinkled with minute wild-flowers, and her attitude of smiling majesty recalled that of Dosso Dossi's Circe. She wore a red robe, flowing in closely ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... foreground of all histories of the Russian campaign is the shadow of the great warrior who led the troops, in whose invincibility all men who followed him Anno 1812 believed and by whom they stood in their soldier's honor, with a constancy without ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... gentlest handling, so she only pours upon them the balm of her tender silence. There is none of the recognized and allowed selfishness of a betrothed pair about Barbara. Sometimes I almost forget that she is engaged, so little does she ever bring herself into the foreground; and yet, if it were not for us, I think that to-day she could well find in ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... from which I had the first near view of the grand assemblage of tufa cones, covered with an ancient vegetation, backed by high mountains of volcanic origin, on whose ragged crests the red ash was blazing vermilion against the blue sky, with a foreground of bright waters flashing through a primeval forest. The banks of these streams were deeply excavated by the heavy rains, and sometimes we had to jump three and even four feet out of the forest into the river, and as much up again, fording the Shiraoi river only more ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... whole country of the Marsh seemed faintly luminous, holding the sunshine in its greens and browns. Beside the dyke which flows by Brodnyx village stood a big thorn tree, still bright with haws. It made a vivid red patch in the foreground, the one touch of Christmas in a landscape which otherwise suggested October—especially in the sunshine, which poured in a warm shower on to ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... of somebody, away up above all mundane affairs—not responsible for them, perhaps, but capable, at all events, of thoroughly taking them in—smiling at them all with a sort of ferocious cynicism. In the foreground of this impression were the good friends—the really good friends she had just been telling Portia about, who had taken her back with so warm a welcome—because she'd succeeded; got away ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... words his heavenly existence. With regard to the first and second points there arose the view of humiliation and exaltation, such as we find in Paul and in numerous writings after him. In connection with the third point the concept "Son of God" was thrust into the foreground, and gave rise to the idea of the image of God (2 Cor. IV. 4; Col. I. 15; Heb. I. 2; Phil. II. 6). The fourth point gave occasion to the formation of theses, such as we find in Rom. VIII. 29: [Greek: prototokos en pollois adelphois], Col. I. 18: [Greek: prototokos ek ton nekron] ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... was clear and bitterly cold when Hawtrey and Sally Creighton drove away from Stukely's barn. Winter had lingered unusually long that year, and the prairie gleamed dimly white, with the sledge trail cutting athwart it, a smear of blue-grey, in the foreground. It was—for Lander's lay behind them with the snow among the stubble belts that engirdled it—an empty wilderness the mettlesome team swung across, and during the first few minutes the cold struck through them with a sting like ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... dining-room, surrounded by the forest, and commanding a view of the lake and wooded hillside opposite, the little landing below, where were moored our barge with its white awning, the gay canoe, and two or three Indian montarias, making the foreground of the picture. After breakfast our party dispersed, some to rest in their hammocks, others to hunt or fish, while Mr. Agassiz was fully engaged in examining a large basket of fish,—Tucunares, Acaras, Curimatas, Surubims, etc.,—just brought in from the lake for his inspection, and showing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... last from the cover of the woods at the head of the island, and glanced up the broad swift stream to the point where it ran smooth before breaking into the rapids; and as a soft pastoral feature in the foreground of that magnificent landscape, they found them far from unpleasing. Some such pair is in the foreground of every famous American landscape; and when I think of the amount of public love-making in the season of pleasure-travel, from Mount Desert to the Yosemite, and from the parks of Colorado to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... reference to individual personalities and relationships; and that it was only at a later stage that words like "I" and "Thou" came into use, and the holophrases broke up into "parts of speech" and took on a definite grammatical structure. (2) If true, these facts point clearly to a long foreground of rude communal language, something like though greatly superior to that of the animals, preceding or preparing the evolution of Self-consciousness proper, in the forms of "I" and "Thou" and the grammar of personal actions and relations. "They show that the plural and all other forms ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... in hand), scientists (with book under arm), Franciscan friars (with crucifix and mission bells in hand), etc. These are followed by the Red Coats, indicating those who preserved order. These men are all led by the Spirit of Adventure. She is no longer in the foreground, but is ready to fall behind as soon as she ...
— Palaces and Courts of the Exposition • Juliet James
... days before. "But what is the good," he thought, "of this green grass, this sunny air, that blue sky, those white clouds, and the distant tinted foliage, without that figure, which a few days ago stood in the foreground of the picture?" But, as the woman to whom, in his soul's sight, the whole world was but a background, was not there, he turned his eyes from the warm autumnal scene, and prepared again to write to her. He had scarcely taken up ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... opinion; but no friendship nor influence was sufficient to retard what may be called his retrograde course: like his friend, Lord Stanley, he became less and less a Whig, and finally stood in the foreground of Conservatism. He was a warm supporter of the Irish Roman Catholics, but did not appear ever to have understood their political tactics. His sympathy for what is termed Pusey-ism may have accounted for his leanings to the Irish Romanist party, although in this respect, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... down from the sky like a frog into the water, to deliver the tortured slave; Insarov in his turn fell into raptures over the back and legs of the sturdy man in the green cloak, who stands in the foreground of Titian's Ascension and holds his arms outstretched after the Madonna; but the Madonna—a splendid, powerful woman, calmly and majestically making her way towards the bosom of God the Father—impressed both Insarov and Elena; they liked, too, ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... faint," he announced, and did. When he returned to his love-story Johnnie's head was in Kitty's lap and a mounted policeman was in the foreground of the scene. His face was wet from the mist of ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... you—with the seething mass of oxen twisted all round the cart, in such a fashion that their heads looked as though they were growing out of their rumps; and their horns seemed to protrude from their backs; the smoking fire with just a blaze in the heart of the smoke; Jim-Jim in the foreground, where the oxen had thrown him in their wild rush, stretched out there in terror, and then as a centre to the picture the great gaunt lioness glaring round with hungry yellow eyes, roaring and whining as she made up her mind ...
— A Tale of Three Lions • H. Rider Haggard
... grateful task to revive old memories of those who formed the foreground of the life-story of one whose radiant presence shall always live in my memory: whose steadfastness and courage endeared her to all; whose influence on those who met her and watched her and listened to her was far-reaching, since she ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... impression of receding motion;—she ventured even to hope that there was something alluring in the motion. That, however, must be made unmistakably clear through the pursuing figures with which she proposed to fill the foreground. ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... who occupied the central foreground of our match-maker's thoughts were her niece, Mabel Aylott, and her own departed husband's namesake, Frederic Chilton. She dilated to herself and to Mabel with especial gusto upon the "wonderful leading," the inward whisper ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... the mainland—a broad, parklike expanse stretching inland to the foot of a low plateau spread out before them. The little dots in the foreground became grazing herds of deer and antelope and bos; a huge woolly rhinoceros wallowed in a mudhole to the right, and beyond, a mighty mammoth culled the tender shoots from a tall tree. The roars and screams and growls of giant carnivora ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... autumn breaks, I take my hoe, and moving them myself out of the park, I plant them everywhere near the hedges and in the foreground of the halls. Last night, when least expected, they got a good shower, which made them all revive. This morn my spirits still rise high, as the buds burst in bloom bedecked with frost. Now that it's cool, a thousand stanzas on the autumn scenery I sing. In ecstasies ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Naturalists, and multitudes besides naturalists, know that the hypothesis which I am represented as putting forward as new, is much older than the hypothesis of natural selection—goes back at least as far as Dr. Erasmus Darwin. My purpose was to bring into the foreground again a factor which has, I think, been of late years improperly ignored; to show that Mr. Darwin recognized this factor in an increasing degree as he grew older (by showing which I should have thought I sufficiently ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... the line of hills close in the foreground where, an instant before, had been only empty ground. There was a sharp crackle, a strident hum and then the muffled plop of bullets burying themselves in the earth six hundred feet in the rear. The Nig grew taut in every muscle; ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... In the foreground of the picture stood a man with a horn in his uplifted hand, which he had just taken from his mouth. He was minus a coat; and the rough-and-tumble disarray of his attire showed that he had been lounging by his camp-fire, or perhaps overseeing the preparation of supper. ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... mother! how solemnly I invoke your spirit as I review these trying scenes of my girlhood, so long agone! Your patient face and neatly-dressed figure stands ever in the foreground of that checkered time; a figure showing naught to an on-looker but the common place virtues of an honest woman! Never would an ordinary observer connect those virtues with aught of heroism or greatness, but to me they are as bright ...
— From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or Struggles for Freedom • Lucy A. Delaney
... view, the foreground, that at once arrested our attention. Edith seized my arm. "Look, oh, look!" ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... held their breath, from Franko there spouted an eruption, which seemed to plant all Mardi in the foreground. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... and Satan, entering from the left, meet in the foreground. Satan is dressed in the dark ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... them are the skull and bones of St Siffrein, and the nail that pierced the right hand of J. C. on the Cross. In the chancel is a "Coronation" of Mary painted on wood, 15th cent., and behind the altar another "Coronation" by P. Veronese. In the foreground are Saints Laurence and Siffrein. Adjoining is the Palais de Justice, 1640, with frescoes and a crucifix in the "salle des assises." Within the court, right hand, is a Triumphal arch, erected by Diocletian between ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... his office. Lillie would go with him on Tuesday evening, after the readings were over; and then it was understood that all parties were to devote themselves to making the evening pass agreeable to her. She was to be put forward, kept in the foreground, and every thing arranged to make her appear the queen of the fete. They had tableaux, where Rose made Lillie into marvellous pictures, which all admired and praised. They had little dances, which Lillie thought rather stupid and humdrum, because they were not en ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... picture the dead tree in the centre is that from which the bark was stripped, which was erected in the Crystal Palace and unfortunately destroyed by fire. It is called the "Mother of the Forest." The two trees nearer the foreground are healthy, medium-sized trees, about fifteen feet diameter at six feet above ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... coincidence, or of direct cause, is distinctive and peculiar to that part of the United States which has a French background, though it now has made itself felt throughout the nation. And, however little in its feature and language the foreground may seem to take color of it, I shall always believe that the consecration of the rivers and paths, by explorations and ministries that were for the most part as unselfish as France's scholarship is to-day, must in some subtle way have had such a potency as ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... rights has been attended by many deplorable circumstances which ought sometime, in the proper way, to be accounted for. But back of it all is the struggle of a people to come into its own, and while we look upon the incidents in the foreground let us not forget the great tragic reality in the background which towers above the ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... but a few scraps of their food; they went on again at sundown. In the pink flush of another dawn they stood together on the uplands back of Last Ridge and saw before them and below them the green of Desert Valley. In the foreground, a thin wisp of smoke arose from the spot where the Longstreets ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... after Rantoul's marriage to little Tina Glover, Herkimer returned to America. The last years had placed him in the foreground of the sculptors of the world. He had that strangely excited consciousness that he was a figure in the public eye. Reporters rushed to meet him on his arrival, societies organized dinners to him, magazines sought the details of his life's struggle. Withal, however, he felt a strange loneliness, ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... looking upon a garden door in the left-hand wall, and two in the right. In the middle of the room, a round table with chairs set about it, and books, magazines and newspapers upon it. In the foreground on the left, a window, by which is a small sofa with a work-table in front of it. At the back the room opens into a conservatory rather smaller than the room. From the right-hand side of this, a door ...
— Ghosts - A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... with pelargoniums blooming on the ground, and a spring which was flowing out of something green. "That is a covered beer-barrel!" said Pelle, and now Lasse too could see the tap, but it was wonderfully natural. Right in the background one could see the lord's castle on a cliff, and in the foreground lay a fallen tree-trunk; two green-clad huntsmen sat astride of it, concocting their evil schemes. Lasse nodded—he knew something of the wickedness of ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... can claim to be literally more informed on the subject than most people, having above my share of friends and relations who have been there. I have the clearest possible picture of the country—a stretch of sand, some pyramids in the background, and, in the centre foreground, smiling enigmatically—not the Sphinx, but my friend or relation. I at once gave Mr. LOW five marks out of ten upon discovering that none of his illustrations reproduced himself on either on or off a camel. On less personal grounds, I have no scruple in giving him the remaining five for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... to own Titians and Raphaels three or four— I love so much their style and tone— One Turner, and no more. (A landscape, foreground golden dirt, The ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... much as for woman. Nor does it mean, I think, any lack of passion and the deepest instincts of womanhood. All these are present and can be wakened by the right man at the right time. Indeed, the very fact that marriage (with or without love) is not incessantly in the foreground of an American girl's consciousness probably makes the awakening all the more deep and tender because comparatively ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... the green slope of the hill. The competitors in their best Sunday suits, some armed with muskets and some with fowling pieces—for they were not particular—and with bunches of ribbons fluttering in their three-cornered hats, and sprigs of gay flowers in their breasts, stood in the foreground, in an irregular cluster, while the spectators, in pleasant disorder, formed two broad, and many-coloured parterres, broken into little groups, and separated by a wide, clear sweep of green sward, running up from ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... with a halo of poetry and mystery, and lays hold of the imagination and the heart without awaking vulgar curiosity. Thrice happy age when one can hug one's white woolly lamb to one's bibbed breast, kiss its pink bead eyes in irrational ecstasy, and manipulate the squeak in its foreground without desire to ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... The foreground of these pictures is occupied by a pair of lovers meeting after the long winter's separation, a dance upon the village green, a young man gazing on the mistress he adores, a disconsolate exile ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... The bulb of this instantaneous attachment Mr. Trenton held in his hand, and the instant Miss Sommerton turned around, the little shutter, as if in defiance of her, gave a snap, and she knew her picture had been taken, and also that she was the principal object in the foreground. ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... mutineers were secured. The remainder of the night passed slowly away. It was a time of great anxiety. When the morning broke we looked eagerly towards the east. There was the land not eight miles off—a rocky shore with a sandy beach—trees in the foreground, and then ridges of hills rising into mountains in the distance. There was not a breath of wind. The sea on every side was like a polished mirror; but every now and then it seemed to heave up as if a pulse beat beneath, ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... pace to the sexton. Adrian had never travelled. He was aware that his romance was earthly and had discomforts only to be evaded by the one potent talisman possessed by his patron. His Alp would hardly be grand to him without an obsequious landlord in the foreground: he must recline on Mammon's imperial cushions in order to moralize becomingly on the ancient world. The search for pleasure at the expense of discomfort, as frantic lovers woo their mistresses to partake the shelter of a but and batten on a crust, Adrian ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the next morning's dawn, I could compare it with nothing but the painting displayed in a theatre, and the quiet that reigned in that still hour, added greatly to the effect. The background of mountains piercing the clouds; the foreground being formed by the town itself with its houses of various hues, and picturesque styles of architecture, ascending the mountain's side, and villas, and country seats aiding the perspective, whilst the island of Cobras served as a ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... sketch of the celebrated tree, with Napoleon's guide, De Coster, in the foreground, see Captain Arthur Gore's Explanatory Notes on the Battle of Waterloo, 1817; and for another view of the ragged old tree as it appeared the day before it was cut down, see Illustrated London ...
— A Week at Waterloo in 1815 • Magdalene De Lancey
... wooded strip to the fern-glade which lay midway between the height of land and Catharines-town; and there joined the large stream which flowed north. I could see in the darkness little of the secret and hidden valley called Yndaia, only the heights silhouetted against the stars, a vague foreground sheeted with mist, and the dark little house standing there all alone under ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... stare of the gold eyes in a peacock's tail. Windows of the Riviera Palace on the hill above were like orange-coloured lanterns hung against an indigo curtain; and in the Place itself bunches of vivid yellow lights, in globes like illuminated fruit set on tall lamp posts, lit the foreground of the strange picture with unnatural brilliance. Grass and trees were a vivid, arsenical green, almost vicious yet beautiful, and the flowers gleamed like resting butterflies. The summer warmth of the air had a curiously tonic and exciting quality. It seemed to have gathered into ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... sort of colonnade, beneath which the people jostled and crowded. The upper stories were all painted with wonderful pictures. Above the straight line of the roofs the deep blue of a cloudless sky stretched from side to side. Lords and ladies thronged the foreground, while on a dais in the centre a gallant gentleman, just alighted off his horse, stooped to the fingers of a girl as bravely dressed out as Selina's lady between the saints; and round about stood venerable ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... of vision, Lucile took in Frona smiling with extended hand in the foreground, the dainty dressing-table, the simple finery, the thousand girlish evidences; and with the sweet wholesomeness of it pervading her nostrils, her own girlhood rose up and smote her. Then she turned a bleak eye and cold ear ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... Blanc in full view. Figures in the foreground; two of them standing apart; one of them a gentleman of- -oh,—ah,—yes! the other a lady in a white cashmere, leaning on his shoulder.—The ingenuous reader will understand that this was an internal, private, personal, subjective diorama, seen for one instant on the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... and manoeuvred. By the Nile all the tops of the palm-trees were crowded with daring riflemen, whose positions were indicated by the smoke-puffs of their rifles, or when some tiny black figure fell, like a shot rook, to the ground. In the foreground the gunboats, panting and puffing up the river, were surrounded on all sides by spouts and spurts of water, thrown up by the shells and bullets. Again the flotilla drew near the narrow channel; again the watching army held their breath; and again they saw the leading ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... ascribed to a college graduate is all the time growing. It was kept back for a long time by unfortunate prejudices. Because other than intellectual forces had made the nation strong, and everywhere in the foreground of public activity there were vigorous and influential men who had not continued their education beyond the public grammar school, so the masses instinctively believed that insight, real energy and enterprise were better developed in the school of life than in the world of books. The college ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... cause of all the souls that hereafter, till the end of time, might inhabit the land, could discern within the spring-day horizon, the course of the Blackwater and the Boyne before they blend into one; the hills of Cavan to the far north; with the royal hill of Tailtean in the foreground; the wooded heights of Slane and Skreen, and the four ancient roads, which led away towards the four subject Provinces, like the reins of empire laid loosely on their necks. Since the first Apostle of the Gentiles had confronted the subtle Paganism ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... newly perceived and worshipped; and the beauties of pastoral Thames, the temple of peace, hardly noticed in the passing of the day—taken as air to the breather; until some chip of the scene, round which an emotion had curled, was vivid foreground and gateway to shrouded romance: it might be the stream's white face browning into willow-droopers, or a wagtail on a water-lily leaf, or the fore-horse of an up-river barge at strain of legs, a red-finned perch hung a foot ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... town of Schmalcald. Bodies of Crusading troops defiling past. Lewis and Elizabeth with their suite in the foreground. ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... precious for that. Peter was no lover either of destruction or construction; perhaps he too was an obstructionist; though not without imagination. His uncle knew he had a regrettable tendency to put things in the foreground and keep ideas very much in the background, and called him therefore a phenomenalist. Lucy shared this tendency, being a good deal of an artist and nothing ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... keeps them before the world's eye. In every great war that has shaken the civilised world since the strife in the Crimea broke out, the ambulance, its patients, its attendants, have always been in the foreground of the picture. Never have the inseparable miseries of warfare been so well understood and so widely realised, thanks in part to that new literary force of the Victorian age, the war correspondent, and chiefly, perhaps, to the new position henceforth assumed by the ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... historian and poet offered to the gods the products of human genius. In the religion of the Greeks, however, the moral element, although not passed over and in the Greek epic and tragedy not seldom expressed in grand characters, stood nevertheless too little in the foreground, so that the worship of the divine, as in the older nature-worship, especially in the feasts in honor of Dionysus and Aphrodite, was marked by immoral practices. The conception of a future life, which taken in connection with a future retribution has a moral tendency, had but little ...
— A Comparative View of Religions • Johannes Henricus Scholten
... was left to grapple with illiteracy, superstition and the needs of a benighted and down-trodden people, knotty questions in theology no longer vexed him, for he recognized that there was but one all-sufficient solvent for the dark problems which thrust themselves into the foreground, and that was the redemptive power of the Gospel of Christ. Men may be puzzled and perplexed concerning the theory of sunshine, but there are no questionings on the subject that can override the practical effect of the sun. The sun shines in spite of our metaphysics! Our brother advanced ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888 • Various
... stuff is playing right into your mitt. I didn't spill who I was to them news hounds, and I don't have to. I let you take all the foreground. I was the mechanic—see? So it's you that will have to put this over; and put it over ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... of which the length was but the measure of her gratified eagerness, they took a boat on the river, the dear little river, as Isabel called it, where the opposite shore seemed still a part of the foreground of the landscape; or drove over the country in a phaeton—a low, capacious, thick-wheeled phaeton formerly much used by Mr. Touchett, but which he had now ceased to enjoy. Isabel enjoyed it largely and, handling the reins in a manner which ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... flaunting peacock stands for absolute nature, without ideal or inspiration. A mystic figure in the background holds the cruse of oil. Over all of them floats a winged figure holding a laurel wreath for the victorious living, while a shadowy figure in the foreground holds a ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... van Ruysdael, Forest Landscape, in the London National Gallery. In the Cn. is a stagnant pool, backed on the Right by thick woods. A dead tree, white, very prominent in the Right foreground, another at its foot sloping down to Cn. On the Left a bank sloping down to Cn., a tree at its foot; behind both, and seen also between the two central trees, bright sky and clouds. Thus, there is on the Right, Mass and Direction to Cn.; on the Left, Vista and ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... source of worry to the great man during the great man's life, he at least did what he could to keep the great man's memory green. He wrote a book of recollections full of filial affection and Latin phrases and painted innumerable war pictures in which Washington was always in the foreground on a white horse "with the British streaking it." Washington bequeathed to him a square in the City of Washington and twelve hundred acres on Four Mile Run in the vicinity of Alexandria. Upon land near by inherited from his father Custis built the famous ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... considerable depth, by which means the products of combustion are mainly hydrogen and carbonic oxide. These gases are then conveyed by means of the main and branch pipes to the cylindrical apparatus in the foreground, into which the ore to be acted upon is driven under pressure by means of the gases, which, being ignited, raise the ore to a high temperature. The ore is maintained in a state of violent agitation. Each particle being ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... the whole thing, a great deal better than the diners themselves do. It's a banquet, given by a certain number of my man's friends, in honor of his fiftieth birthday, and you see the men gathering in the hotel parlor—well, you can imagine it in almost any hotel—and Haxard is in the foreground. Haxard is ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... Miss Schuyler, who was going back to New York, the first stage of her journey to the depot. A month had passed when one evening Torrance rode that way. The prairie, lying still and silent with a flush of saffron upon its western rim, was tinged with softest green, but broad across the foreground stretched the broken, chocolate-tinted clods of the ploughing, and the man's face grew grimmer as he glanced at them. He turned and watched the long lines of crawling cattle that stretched half-way across the vast sweep of green; and ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... picturesque, but a musical, poet; although he has this merit that the object chosen by him for any particular foreground always remains prominent to the end, enriched, but not incumbered, by the opulence of descriptive details furnished by an exhaustless imagination. I wish the Paradise Lost were more carefully read and studied than I can see any ground for believing it is, especially those parts which, ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... Bunyan wrote the piece. These four tales, admirable as they are in breadth, are nevertheless essentially reflective. The imaginative group of the same scope is of a higher rank. In it the general life is set forth with more individuality, though life in the abstract still occupies the foreground. To set aside such a moral parable as "The Lily's Quest," or such an illustration of the power of love to raise a man above himself temporarily as "Drowne's Wooden Image," or such a study of isolation as "The Man of Adamant," ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... of tempest when lighter growths are tossed and torn; it shines bright through the snow; it has a well-bred willingness to be background, with the well-bred gift of presence, whether as background or foreground. The soul of the box-tree is an aristocrat, and the sap that runs through it is the ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... of Shiloh, Dick gets into three big fights. Antietam is the big battle described, with McClellan always in the foreground. ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Kimberley that he could not see South African affairs at large in their true perspective. The sparkle of his diamonds made him curiously colour-blind and out of this defect in his mental vision sprang the mischief. Kimberley, for the time being at least, stood so closely in the foreground that other objects were thrown out of focus. Nor did the disturbing influence of the glare and halation of Kimberley only affect the vision of the diamond men within the town. It closed the eyes of the besiegers without it to a great strategical opportunity ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... heard at a distance;—on a sudden the sounds ceased, and all was still—again they were renewed, and then intermitted with short pauses; during which several persons passed backwards and forwards, in the proscenium or foreground of the tent, at if engaged ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... extreme left in the background, and at a distance from the scene, two women-servants who are looking on. To the right a cupboard with its usual contents—all scrupulously clean.... A wooden staircase leading to the upper floor. In the foreground near the feet of the mother, a hen leading her young ones, to whom a little girl throws crumbs of bread; a basin full of water, and on the edge of it, one of the small chickens with its beak up in the air so as to let the ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... stood significantly in the foreground, and that was that Pink and the Native Son had been the last to speak with her, so far as anyone knew. That was it—so far as anyone knew. Andy's lips tightened. There were many strangers riding through the country, and where ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... they stared, this fog seemed to solidify before their eyes, seemed curiously to step into the foreground and show itself for what it was. They saw it was no longer fog, but water—a level spread of dark, silent water. The Beaver Creek had flooded its banks and was noiselessly, pitilessly creeping ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... rights were ignored? (c) What were those baptismal rights and privileges which the Cambridge Platform had not definitely settled? The discussion of the first two questions precipitated into the foreground the still unanswered third. The turmoil in the Hartford church continued for years and was provocative of disturbances throughout the colony. Accordingly, in May, 1656, a petition was presented to the General Court by persons ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... the ground. The wall behind her is grey with a black wainscot. On the left, far back in the picture, on a low stool, some grey-green drapery strikes the highest note of colour in the picture. On the right, in the foreground, some tall daisies come into the picture, and two butterflies flutter over the girl's blonde head. This picture seems to exist principally in the seeing! I mean that the execution is so strangely simple that the thought, ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... artillery, bisected as is the German fashion, lay two halves of a battalion of infantry. In the foreground the officers sat on their camp-chairs, smoking long faience pipes; in the rear, driven deep into the turf, the battalion flag stood furled in its water-proof case, with the drum-major's halberd beside it, and drums and band instruments around it on the grass. Behind this lay a straight row of ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... picture must be bounded less perfectly and less distinctly, than the group; for it is like a fragment cut out of the optic scene of the world. However the painter, by the setting of his foreground, by throwing the whole of his light into the centre, and by other means of fixing the point of view, will learn that he must neither wander beyond the composition, nor omit any thing ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... man and of apes, and by the identity of their embryonic development, as I have fully shown in my "Evolution of Man" (chaps. xix. and xxvi.) The mode and manner in which he here puts palaeontology in the foreground, and throws on the theory of descent the task of producing an unbroken gradation of fossil transitional forms between the apes and man, is very indicative of Virchow's ignorance of this zoological question—in which ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... content that one so direct and impetuous in his feelings as Bear's Meat, and who was at the same time so little qualified to manage his portion of an intellectual conversation, should be foremost any longer. For that reason he brought himself more into the foreground, leaving to his friend the capacity of listener and observer, rather than that of a speaker and actor. What took place under this new arrangement, will appear ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... for the first time that Mr. Wilson had so far changed his policy as now to put peace mediation in the foreground and to give the question of the 'Freedom of the Seas' second place. I shall return later ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... witnessed a scene taking place at that moment on the lawn near the front veranda. Standing there with his back against a pillar, surrounded by the other children of the community, was Ivan Ivanovitch. In the foreground, facing him, stood Augustus Adolphus, addressing the new-comer in firm accents, and emphasizing his remarks by waving a grimy forefinger before Ivan Ivanovitch's uninterested face. The high, positive tones of Augustus Adolphus ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... banks are crowded to the water's edge with tropical verdure, with many flowering plants and creepers, all the colors of which are reflected in its clear waters. The old barracks were in sight as we slowly worked our way against the current. Located in a small clearing, with cocoanut-trees in the foreground, the white buildings made, with a backing of deep green, a very pretty picture. We approached cautiously, not knowing with what reception we should meet. As we neared the small wharf, we found waiting some twenty or thirty men, of all colors, from ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... was too light and slender to make much resistance, he was first to be pushed into the foreground, and found himself nearest the commander-in-chief. He made the best of a bad matter, and his frank young face flushed hotly as he doffed his battered ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... said I, "joking apart, they are very picturesque, ain't they, how well they look in a sketch, eh! nice feature in the foreground." ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... and fought in the air. Rome, which is seen in the background, is said to have been the scene of this event. Above, borne on a shield, is Attila, with a scourge in his hand; opposite him Theodoric, King of the Visigoths. The foreground is a battle-field, strewn with corpses, which are seen to be gradually reviving, rising up and rallying, while among them ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... with a ground cover, and again I am not familiar with the ground cover, but just judging from the general appearance it looks like a picture that came from our files. If that is true then I know the story. The tree in the background is a Calhoun tree and the tree in the foreground is a Millwood growing in Lespedeza sericea and I will bring out some points in a few minutes in the general discussion on the value of these two plants growing ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... so far, about his rapid on-and-off engagement, for which mercy he was duly grateful. And of her, who dwelt in the foreground and background ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... cannot always remember the point wished for at the precise moment of need; so that, taking her all in all, she is nearly as agreeable as if she were ignorant. Her knowledge never bulks heavily and insistently in the foreground or middle- distance, like that of Miss Celia Van Tyck, but remains as it should, in the haze of a melting and delicious perspective. She has plenty of enthusiasms, too, and Miss Van Tyck has none. Imagine our plight at being ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... think where she was nor how she came there. She looked about the unfamiliar walls, covered with paper decorated in landscapes—a hill in the distance with a tall castle among the trees, a blue lake in the foreground and two maidens sitting pensively upon a green bank with their arms about one another. Marcia liked it. She felt there was a story in it. She would like to imagine about the lives of those two girls when she had ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... the foreground, illuminated by a marvelous sunset, stood the freedman's home. It was a picturesque cottage with gables, dormer windows and wide verandas. French windows reached down to the floor, and through the open casements appeared a seductive scene in the family ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... leagues and pass resolutions against war. They could return to their ancient job of humble service, and resume their familiar location in the background. They did all these things and did them fervently; but they did something else in this war—they stepped out into the foreground, where the air was thick with danger, and demonstrated their courage. The mother no longer says: "Return, my gallant one, with your shield or on it," and goes back to her baking. She packs her kit and jumps into a motor ambulance headed for the ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... time, as she sat alone in the window, looking out over the garden, the moon beginning to rise, and the sunset light still colouring the sky in the north-west, just as it had done when she returned home after the bonfire. The events of that sad morning had faded out of the foreground. The Oakshott family seemed to have resigned themselves to the mystery of Peregrine's fate. Only his mother had declined from the time of his disappearance. When it was ascertained that his uncle had ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the Tehachapi Mountains and Mahatmadom suddenly looked long, weary, and profitless, and by means of which the twins were transferred from the comfortable middle distance they had previously occupied to the immediate foreground of duty. The lens might slip, but while it was in place she saw as ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to this end that evolution is in every direction placing woman to-day in the foreground and quickening her to make new demands upon the resources ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... care no more for the herd of animals called young ladies than you do for the herd of animals called young gentlemen; to you—who despise and detest the groupings and combinations of fashion, as an idiot painter that seems industrious to place staring fools and unprincipled knaves in the foreground of his picture, while men of sense and honesty are too often thrown in the dimmest shades. Mrs. Riddell, who will take this letter to town with her, and send it to you, is a character that, even in your ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... the foreground, in a large dining-room where the table was not yet cleared; and at the farther side of the table sat a young man, doubtless Jean Louis himself, smoking his pipe and reading a newspaper, without appearing to trouble ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... the "encircling reef," or by a still more curious reef which goes by the name of the "atoll." There is a very good picture, which Professor Roscoe has been kind enough to prepare for me, of one of these atolls, which will enable you to form a notion of it as a landscape. You have in the foreground the waters of the Pacific. You must fancy yourself in the middle of the great ocean, and you will perceive that there is an almost circular island, with a low beach, which is formed entirely of coral sand; growing upon that beach you have vegetation, which takes, of ...
— Coral and Coral Reefs • Thomas H. Huxley
... mountain from which grand views of distant peaks and vast forest-sides could be seen. The brilliant hues of wild flowers, everywhere, mottled the ground; the dark-green of towering pines, or again the shorter aspens like pickets on guard in the foreground; the bleached skeletons of lodge-pole pine burnt clean in forest fires; and just before the riders, the plunging water falling from a cliff that shut out any glimpse of the trail ahead, combined to produce a master-piece of ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... his part diligently, judiciously, and without the slightest ostentation. He had two merits, both of which are rarely found together in a commentator: he was content to be merely a commentator,-to keep in the background, and to leave the foreground to the author whom he had undertaken to illustrate. yet, though willing to be an attendant, he was by no means a slave; nor did he consider it as part of his editorial duty to see no faults in the writer ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... F. Hamtramck. Upon arriving in Mexico, Captain Fairfax fell a victim to the climate and died at Saltillo, August 16, 1847. His body was brought home and buried near the church he loved so well, and it is thought that the grave which may be seen in the foreground of the war-time picture of the church on page 62 may be his. The tablet to his memory has long since been destroyed, and every vestige of his tombstone has disappeared, but nature, not forgetting his generous ...
— A Virginia Village • Charles A. Stewart
... his declaration of the 23d of June[12] as the basis of the Constitution, with such modifications as subsequent circumstances might have suggested. Religion would be one of the matters placed in the foreground. ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... gentle evening wind. The mingling of various voices and the sound of laughter made a cheerful impression upon the ear, analogous to that of the fluttering colours upon the eye. Into the sheet of water reflecting the flushed sky in the foreground of the living picture, a knot of urchins were casting stones, and watching the expansion of the rippling circles. So, in the rosy evening, one might watch the ever-widening beauty of the landscape—beyond the newly-released workers wending home—beyond ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... let us always put charity in the foreground. It is such a fine thing that its counterfeit even is an excellent card. I will give my butter to the people and they will give me their money. Is ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... the painters for? If there is anything good, let them bring it to me and I will look at it. She said she preferred the picture to the real thing, it was so much more artistic. In the landscape itself, she complained, there was sure to be a chimney in the distance, or a restaurant in the foreground, that spoilt the whole effect. The artist left it out. If necessary, he could put in a cow or a pretty girl to help the thing. The actual cow, if it happened to be there at all, would probably be standing the wrong way round; the girl, in all likelihood, would be fat and ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... measures have been the improved educational facilities provided by municipal authorities. In the South, this has come since 1865. Parks and recreation centers are rapidly being added. General regulation of rights and privileges has been made with the city in the foreground, and many another measure has favored the ...
— The Negro at Work in New York City - A Study in Economic Progress • George Edmund Haynes
... commander Sept. 1 and signed the capitulation Sept. 2, stands in a stooping posture, leaning upon his chair and the table. Across the table, his right hand resting upon it, and standing erect, is GENERAL MOLTKE, The seated figure in the foreground is BISMARCK; behind ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... vertical. It is good, in early practice, to accustom yourself to enclose your subject, before sketching it, with a light frame of wood held upright before you; it will show you what you may legitimately take into your picture, and what choice there is between a narrow foreground near you, and a wide one farther off; also, what height of tree or building you can ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... of mind. With his short sight, I knew that he could not see me at that distance, but I knew that he had detected the direction in which the danger lay. By slowly moving ahead, the distance was cut to about seventy yards, which was not too far away in an open country with a wounded rhino in the foreground. I resolved to shoot before he charged or before he ran away, and so I prepared to end the long chase ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... English country inn. It comes out into the foreground of a thousand interesting histories and pictures of common life. In them it has an individuality as marked as the parish church, couchante in its wide-rimmed nest of grave stones; as marked in unique architecture, location, and surroundings. In ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... scheme of the picture that met his eyes was in dingy blacks and grays. The building that held the ticket, telegraph, and train despatchers' offices was a miserably old ramshackle affair, standing well in the foreground of this scene of gloom and desolation. Its windows were so coated with smoke and grime that they seemed to have been painted over in order to secure secrecy within. Here and there a lazy cur lay drowsily snapping at the flies, and at the end of the station, ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... out the view. Presently the trees opened, and H. cried, "There, that white; don't you see?—there—there!" pointing with great energy, as if she were getting ready to fly. I looked and saw, sure enough, behind the dark mass of the Mole, (a huge blue-black mountain in the foreground,) the granite ranges rising gradually and grim as we rode; but, further still, behind those gray and ghastly barriers, all bathed and blazing in the sun's fresh splendors, undimmed by a cloud, unveiled ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... immediate neighbourhood of Gafsa. Not so; that from the low hills behind Sidi Mansur, with the stony ridge of Jebel Assalah at your back, surpasses it in some respects. Through a gap you look towards the distant green plantations, with a shimmering level in the foreground; on your other side lies the Oued Baiesh, crossed by the track to Kairouan, where strings of camels are for ever moving to and fro, laden with merchandise from the north or with desert products from the oases of Djerid and Souf. ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas |
